Piers Morgan's former employers at CNN finally responded on Thursday to the former host's recent targeting of Anderson Cooper. Politico's Dylan Byers reported that in an e-mail, network publicist Megan Rivers "accused Morgan of making unjustified attacks on his former colleague [Cooper] in order to find a new job." The former CNN host is now editor-at-large at the Daily Mail.
Anderson Cooper
By Geoffrey Dickens | September 18, 2014 | 10:03 AM EDT
The mother of ISIS beheading victim James Foley told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, on September 11, that she was “embarrassed and appalled” by the White House’s handling of her son’s kidnapping. On September 8 a spokesman for the family of ISIS victim Steven Sotloff claimed that both families were “bullied and hectored” by the administration.
So how many Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) network stories have been devoted to helping these families tell their shocking stories of a White House that let them down and even intimidated them? Just three (CBS 2, ABC 1, NBC 0).
By Matthew Balan | September 16, 2014 | 3:57 PM EDT
Areva Martin brought in the specter of Jim Crow on Monday's Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN, as she commented on the child abuse case against NFL player Adrian Peterson. Martin contended that "corporal punishment, in any form, is abusive," and emphasized, "We used to not wear helmets when we rode bikes. Women used to smoke when they were pregnant. We used to send our kids to segregated schools. So, there are a lot of things we did twenty and thirty years ago that we now know are hurtful and harmful."
By Curtis Houck | September 11, 2014 | 2:28 AM EDT
After President Obama’s speech to the nation on Wednesday night, CNN brought on its newly-minted senior political commenator and former Obama White House press secretary Jay Carney and Republican Senator John McCain (Ariz.) to comment on what the President’s speech regarding U.S policy in dealing withy the Islamic terrorist group ISIS. However, the next eight minutes instantly evolved into a heated debate between the two over the President’s actions of withdrawing troops from Iraq early in his administration and whether that allowed a threat like ISIS to proliferate.
By Randy Hall | August 20, 2014 | 9:19 PM EDT
Ten days after police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown, an 18-year-old African-American, in a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, black filmmaker Spike Lee added his voice to the tumult over the incident. During Tuesday night's edition of Anderson Cooper 360, he told the CNN anchor: “Something smells bad in Ferguson, and it’s not just tear gas.”
“I do not think you should be killed in this country because allegedly you steal some cigarillos. I don’t think you should be killed in this country if there is marijuana in your system,” Lee told Cooper while referring to Brown. “The people -- not only in Ferguson, but all over this country -- do not trust what is happening. I just think there's a war on the black male, and it’s tearing this country apart." [See video below.]
By Randy Hall | August 8, 2014 | 6:45 PM EDT
While the Cable News Network continues to suffer from low ratings, its corporate headquarters has made a number of changes in an effort to hold down costs and change its focus. The latest move came this week, when more than a dozen employees in the cable television channel's digital politics division learned that their positions will be eliminated by the end of the month.
According to an article by Peter Sterne on the capitalnewyork.com website, the workers “were told that they would have to re-apply to new positions with new job descriptions.”
By Randy Hall | August 7, 2014 | 8:15 PM EDT
While Sean Hannity was providing first-hand coverage of the struggle between Israel and Hamas over the Gaza Strip, Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert edited the Fox News Channel host's reporting to make it seem that he used the word “literally” constantly and compared that to a five-year-old boy who has become an Internet sensation after his live television where he often used the word “apparently.”
“Apparently,” the host of The Colbert Report asserted during his Wednesday night program, “that five-year-old child could replace Sean Hannity … literally.” That led the Fox News anchor to declare: “Terrorism isn’t funny,” and “Colbert needs to come over here and get a dose of reality.”
By Matthew Balan | July 30, 2014 | 7:12 PM EDT
CNN's Anderson Cooper targeted former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura in a Tuesday post on Twitter, after a jury awarded the ex-governor of Minnesota over $1.8 million in damages in a defamation lawsuit against the estate of former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle. Kyle's widow, Taya Kyle, is the executor of her deceased husband's estate.
In the Tweet, Cooper expressed his disbelief over the lawsuit, and wondered what was wrong with Ventura: [post below the jump]
By Scott Whitlock | May 6, 2014 | 12:25 PM EDT
In another example of censoring a Barack Obama scandal, NBC has ignored the brewing controversy impacting American veterans and a shocking lack of access to hospital care. Though the news of up to 40 patients dying in Arizona has been going on for months, ABC finally covered the story on Tuesday's Good Morning America, offering a scant 29 seconds. Reporter Amy Robach informed that the President is "standing by his Secretary of Veterans Affairs," despite a call by the American Legion on Monday for his ouster. CBS This Morning gave it 18 seconds.
Robach explained that the nation's largest veterans group has accused "Secretary Eric Shinseki and his top aides of, quote, 'poor oversight and failed leadership,' after reports that as many as 40 patients in Phoenix may have died because of delays in care and allegations that hospitals have tried to cover up other delays." Despite the controversy, this was the first time Shinseki's name has been uttered on ABC since his nomination on December 6, 2008. Fox News and CNN have both covered the scandal, but NBC has avoided it. [See video of CNN's coverage below. MP3 audio here.]
By Randy Hall | March 5, 2014 | 6:25 PM EST
In an obvious back-handed compliment, Rachel Maddow started her eponymous Tuesday night program on MSNBC by supposedly praising the Cable News Network, which she said “once upon a time” was the “only cable news network, and they really did have a singular role in keeping people informed.”
However, while the network once had a reputation for providing information “about what was going on, not only around the country, but around the world” in the 1990s, she claimed “CNN today is not what it used to be.”
By Matt Hadro | February 28, 2014 | 12:14 PM EST
In a clear double standard, CNN was in an uproar on Thursday and Friday over an Arizona GOP legislator's racist jokes about Latinos but has yet to report a Florida Democrat's gaffe about immigrants.
"As if lawmakers in the state of Arizona didn't already have enough negative national attention, there is this," Anderson Cooper piled on. He played state representative John Kavanagh's "racist roast" of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and added that his jokes "set off a firestorm in the Latino community." Yet a few days ago, Florida Democrat Alex Sink emphasized the importance of immigration reform because of the need for landscapers and hotel workers and CNN has said nothing.
By Matthew Balan | February 12, 2014 | 4:05 PM EST
CNN's Anderson Cooper did little to hide his outrage on his Tuesday program over a zoo in Copenhagen, Denmark killing a giraffe. Cooper confronted the zoo's scientific director and asked, "Doesn't the life of the animal itself have some value, rather than just it being part of your breeding program?" The host later expressed his dismay to Jack Hanna: "What he seems to be saying is that the animal itself doesn't really have any right to live."
Cooper later used language familiar to pro-life activists in defense of the giraffe: "At a certain point, the animals themselves should have some right to actually having a life." [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump] The anchor's pro-animal rights segments came just twenty days after CNN senior legal analyst Jeff Toobin ripped pro-lifers on his now-cancelled 10 pm Eastern program: